On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Patrick Stickler wrote:
> The RDF
> MT does not and cannot *know* that "10"->10.
"cannot" is (or denotes) an overly strong term. For what it's worth, I
agree with much of what Jeremy's saying (and I'm glad that someone's
better able to articulte this than me).
RDF/XML might be an interchange format*, but implementations are
springing up that use RDF's conceptual model (or an implementer's best
take thereon) in a more-or-less concrete fashion.
While I buy Jeremy's point of view over Patrick's, that's not to say
that I don't find the latter way of looking at things at least
semi-persuasive. Ultimately, we're going to be dealing with
representations, not referents, at some stage. The question is whether
we make that explicit and how early in the "RDF story" we make that
distinction explicit. I see Patrick's point of view as doing this early;
and Jeremy's as leaving it as late as possible, because a lot of people
can conveniently ignore the symbol/referent distinction and still get
useful work done.
jan
* I used to say, "it's not the syntax that's important, it's the frame
of mind".
--
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287088 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 http://ioctl.org/jan/
That which does not kill us goes straight to our thighs.